Review journal :

An Open-System Approach to Building Theory in Public Relation

by Glen M. Broom

School of Communication, San Diego State University

Stemmed from the writer own experience as a beginning faculty member that faced frustration because he found that it was inadequate to describe public relations practitioners do and the overlapping experiences and interest that he perceived, he tried to build theory that advance both practice and the understanding of how it functions without cluttering the literature and open system approach was picked as it reached beyond their limited literature and paradigms. The focal concept was chosen because it is not only provide the researcher both rationale and motivation for the study, but also it tends to increase interest from [practitioners who often are critical to such a work like this and yet may be essential participant in completing the research.

Choosing the final concept as their base approach, the first step was to identify and define the various roles enacted by the practitioners. The researcher found few and uncertain references to public relations literature thus they need to expand their field and it took a very long time until finally they able to identified and defined the distinctive roles that played by those enacting helping relationship in a wide range of settings.

            There were 8 stages of the concept analysis process that recast by the author which are first, select a concept of interest, something that truly interests you since you will be working on it for a long time and it is better to choose derived terms rather than the primitive one except that are accepted as being commonly understood, meaning that there is shared meaning among users. Second, determine the purpose, clearly spell out the purpose of your inquiry in order to avoid uncertain things that will inhibit the process. Third, identify how the concept has been defined and used. Fourth, determine defining attributes due to build a definition and to differentiate the concept from others. Fifth, create a model case that able you to identify what is and what is not about your focal concept when you were observing certain situations that may or may not include instances of the concept. Sixth, construct examples of borderline, related and contrary cases. Seventh, develop the measures from stage to stage to find out how others measured the attributes of related concept. Finally, build the theory around the local concept, starting by constructing the theoretical model, summarizing the antecedents and consequences of local concept that found in other studies. The quality of theory building in public relations depends on the soundness of the concepts used in the construction thus concepts are the building blocks of theory.

            Researcher usually tend to focused on the wrong point which keep looking the answer in the literature when in the end they got nothing. The key concepts are not defined and are treated as if they are primitive terms understood by all. When concepts are not defined explicitly thus they need to validate the concept. They tend to forget to remember the importance of reliable data in doing research.

            The conceptual foundation are the important key to success in research. Open system approach is purposed to explore the literature that produced a long-term of public relations research. Building theory requires the objective, systematic, and controlled gathering of data to test the hypotheses deduced from theoretical prepositions.

            The author and the team end up using concepts and models limited to only  those who gets what they mean therefore they built boundary that limit their ability to connect public relations scholarship to the larger fields of communication and human behavior and in the end of their attempt to build a body of knowledge in public relations, they have unintentionally build a closed system which is far way from their first prediction while doing the process using the open system.

            As I conclude, the final result of this research was neither clear nor original. They were just kind of improving their mature as a field by increasing some circumstances and they were operating it using a closed system. And the important thing is not to ignore reliable data for the research process. They need to improve in order to get the advantage for their work so they need to connect their own work with the best research in communication and human behavior at all system levels.

References

• Broom, G. M., & Dozier, D. M. (1986). Advancement for public relations role models. Public Relations Review, 12(1), 37–56.
• Broom, G. M., Casey, S., & Ritchey, J. (1997). Toward a concept and theory of organization-public re- lationships. Journal of Public Relations Research, 9(2) 83–98.
• Chaffee, S. H. (1996). Thinking about theory. In M. B. Salwen & D. W. Stacks (Eds.), An integrated ap- proach to communication theory and research (p. 16). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 

Inge Ade Zinnia

135120207121011

IF-5 Communication Science

`English Class

Theory of Public Relations

Journal Review